E3
by HeadInTheClouds427
Summary: AU: E2 Trip and T'Pol had a daughter and a son, T'Liz and Lorian. T'Liz was believed to have died in 2067 when an experiment went horribly wrong. Unbeknownst to Enterprise, T'Liz was thrown into the future to the year 2154. T'Liz is set on making contact with Enterprise, but she has a problem - she's just been dumped in the middle of the Borderland in a badly damaged shuttlepod
1. Chapter 1: There's no going back now

**E****3**

_AU: E__2__ Trip and T'Pol had a daughter and a son, T'Liz and Lorian. T'Liz was believed to have died when an experiment went horribly wrong. Unbeknownst to Enterprise, T'Liz was thrown into the future to the year 2154 in the time just after the end of the Xindi conflict. T'Liz is set on making contact with the future Enterprise and finding her parents, but she has one problem – she's just been dumped into the middle of the Borderland in an unarmed and badly damaged shuttle pod._

**Chapter 1: There's no going back now**

_March 26, 2067_

_Delphic Expanse_

Willful, reckless, fool hardy… Those are just a few of the adjectives T'Liz was certain her mother would use in her lecture for this most recent mishap. She couldn't argue that she was undoubtedly willful and her plan was completely reckless and fool hardy and she would gladly open her eyes to face her mother and the Captain just as soon as her head stopped throbbing.

T'Liz didn't know what had gone wrong, but she wasn't surprised the experiment had failed. Nothing seemed to go right for her these days, not since the accident. Lorian had completely immersed himself in his engineering studies and in reading their father's engineering logs to the point that he no longer so much as held idle conversation. He had fallen back on their Vulcan heritage and closed himself to his grief. Likewise, their mother seemed to have been able to simply shut down a piece of herself, the piece where her father's memory lived, and had continued life as though nothing had happened. In fact the only clue that there had ever been another resident in their quaint B-Deck family unit was the empty chair at the dinner table each evening, a sight that only perpetuated the silence.

T'Liz had always taken more after her father. Like Trip, T'Liz was quick witted and good humored and largely wore her heart on her sleeve. T'Pol had made valiant efforts to instill what she could of the Vulcan culture into her two hybrid children, but T'Liz had also inherited Trip's sheer will. As a child, T'Liz had seldom been able to hold the required focus that effective meditation required and had resisted her mother's teachings frequently. As a result, she was never able to fully tap into the Vulcan ability to compartmentalize. It had been a year since her father's death and she was still quite obviously an emotional wreck. The test had been a welcome distraction.

Opening her eyes, the first thing T'Liz noticed was that she was still in the shuttle pod and that she had most likely come within an inch of destroying the damn thing. The smell of burning electrical hung in the air and smoke was clouding the small compartment. She grabbed a fire extinguisher and sprayed the smoking console. Sitting in the pilot's chair, she decided that the only way to get a sedative for her raging headache would be to contact Enterprise and face the wrath of her mother.

As luck would have it, perhaps the only functioning piece of the smoking console was the communications panel.

"T'Liz to Enterprise, a little help would be great right about now."

She waited a beat before opening the channel again "Enterprise, do you read? I understand I disobeyed a direct order but I could really use some help. The pod's thrusters are offline. You're going to have to come to me."

After a full 2 minutes with no response, T'Liz knew something was wrong. Either her comm panel wasn't working or Enterprise wasn't out there. A check of each pod window showed no visible signs of her home ship and her sensors had been knocked out during the test failure. Trying to keep the rising sense of panic out of her mind, she set about fixing the sensor array so she could at least determine where she was and find Enterprise.

Laying under the instrument panel, T'Liz wondered how the test had gone so horribly wrong. They had encountered the wormhole a week ago and had since been running scans and analyzing the data for evidence that this could be another subspace corridor like the one that had erroneously transported them to this timeline 30 years previously. The hope was that they could utilize this potential corridor to quickly travel several thousand light years away from their current region of space, in which they had unintentionally made a name for themselves and developed a few enemies. As much as possible, the generational ship hoped to fly under the radar of other species. They didn't want to spoil any first contacts or contaminate the timeline so the born explorers had been forced to stow their exploration instincts and focus on survival.

Two days ago, they had determined that the level of gravitational distortion in their current set of scans was too high. The only way to get scans with the level of detail needed for further analysis of the wormhole's potential for safe travel would be to get closer. Unfortunately, the mass of Enterprise was such that if they moved any closer to the wormhole the ship would be caught in its gravitational pull and find out the hard way whether the corridor was safe. T'Liz had become fixated on the possibility though. She had always enjoyed a good mystery and recent events had given her cause to divert her mind to puzzles such as this more frequently. She had worked tirelessly on the calculation and had determined the exact distance required for viable scans and the exact weight allowable at the necessary proximity. Almost exactly the weight of a shuttlepod. Almost.

She had proposed her plan to the Captain and explained that they could modify one of the shuttlepod's sensors and relieve the pod of "excess" weight in order to get closer to the wormhole. She had even proposed piloting the shuttle herself, as she was the smallest of the crew familiar with the analysis. He wouldn't hear of it. It was too dangerous, the margin for error was too high, and the payoff was too low.

She had been angry. Unreasonably angry in fact, but she had been working for 48 hours straight and even the Vulcan in her was at the brink of exhaustion. When it was apparent that no effort to persuade the Captain would work, especially with her mother taking his side, she had curtly asked to be dismissed and gone to her quarters to calm herself.

She had thought that after cleaning herself up, having a meal, and getting some sleep she would be able to forget about the corridor, but the mystery lingered. It weighed on her during her meditation that night and got bigger and meaner the more she tried to ignore it. At 0100 hours she finally decided she had to know if the corridor was viable. The mystery was eating at her and the more it ate at her the closer it came to eating away at the thin veil she kept over her grief. She gathered her toolkit and headed to the launch bay.

The sensor enhancements wouldn't take more than a couple hours which left her with plenty of time to remove excess weight from the shuttlepod and review her final test calculations. She would launch her little unauthorized mission at 0800 as that was shift change and the least likely time for her departure to be noticed and stopped.

Once the sensor upgrades were complete, she began removing anything that was non-essential to the mission. She unbolted all passenger chairs, ditched the food packs and first aid gear, removed most of the onboard maintenance tools and left only a skeleton set of tools behind in case she needed to tweak her sensor modifications. At 0630 she sat in the only remaining seat in the pod, the pilot's seat, and began her final calculation review. It would be close, but she was confident she her measurements were precise and she would be coming home with detailed scans in hand. The Captain would definitely be angry, livid in fact, but she had been sure even he wouldn't be able to stay angry for long once they were over a thousand light years away from the scene of the crime.

Hearing the telltale beeping and reboot noises come from the panel above her, T'Liz got back in the pilot's chair to examine her work. The few fixes she had been able to make with the skeleton set of tools had short range sensors back online and assured her that the comm was indeed functioning. All other systems were done for until she could get her hands on some replacement parts and a full toolkit. She ran a scan of her immediate surroundings and came up with nothing. Not a soul in short range other than herself.

Opening a channel again she said "T'Liz to Enterprise, do you read me?" And was greeted once more by silence.

With no way to command her vessel, T'Liz was at a loss for what to do next. She could spend hours analyzing the data, but she knew what she would find. The test scenario allowed for a limited set of outcomes. Had her calculations been correct, she would have approached the wormhole with little trouble, taken about an hour of scans, and returned to the ship. Had her calculations been incorrect and the wormhole not been a viable corridor, the pod would have been pulled in and presumably crushed by the magnitude of the wormhole's gravity. As she was still alive and had no detailed scans or Enterprise to return to, she came to the dreadful conclusion that the corridor was viable, at least for a shuttlepod, and that her distance-weight calculations had been incorrect. She could only assume that she had just traveled thousands of light years away from everyone she knew and the ship she called home and was effectively stranded in an unknown region of space with no food or water and no way back.

As it turns out, some mysteries are best left unsolved.


	2. Chapter 2: The Borderland

**Chapter 2: The Borderland**

_April 10, 2067*_

_Location Unknown_

14 days. It had been 14 grueling days since she had been foolish enough to think a 25 year old knew anything about quantum mechanics. She had spent the first 24 hours trying in vain to repair the pod's engine with her limited toolkit and it had taken a nasty burn to her entire right arm from a blown conduit to convince her that the thrusters simply could not be fixed with the tools on hand. Accepting that she was well and truly dead in the water and that Enterprise was not coming after her had been hard. She had thought losing her father was difficult, but this was so much worse. Death was final. There was a satisfying sense of closure that accompanied death and, in most cases, death wasn't accompanied by an overwhelming sense of shame.

She couldn't feel a sense of closure with this separation as her family and friends we neither dead nor dying. While unintentional, she had removed herself from their lives and them from hers by choice. The overwhelming regret that filled her was only compounded by the deep sense of shame she felt for burdening her mother and Lorian with her loss so close to the loss of her father. In the matter of a year her family had lost a husband and a daughter, a father and a sister and she didn't know how she would ever forgive herself for the pain she was causing them.

Her Vulcan physiology was helping her survive both the lack of sustenance and social accompaniment of her situation. Although not the master that her mother and Lorian were, T'Liz was able to rely on meditation as a means to refocus her mind and avoid the creeping insanity that she had felt numerous times over the past two weeks. Had she been born a full blooded Vulcan, she could hope to survive a full six to eight weeks without water and longer without food. However, her human half demand more maintenance. Just two weeks in and she could already feel the toll the lack of hydration was taking on her body and she knew she could no longer afford to float silently in the abyss waiting for Enterprise to possibly emerge from the corridor.

Her knees protested as she stood from her meditative pose for the first time in five days. Sitting in the pilot's seat, she readied herself to compose a distress call.

"To any and all space travelers passing within range of this signal, I send you an urgent plea for help. I am T'Liz, daughter of Vulcan, and I am stranded with no food, water, or propulsion systems. I am in need of whatever assistance you may provide. Peace and long life."

She had decided that masquerading as a full blooded Vulcan would raise fewer questions and had composed her message in Vulcan, adding the traditional Vulcan salutation for effect. She may not have been the master of emotion that Lorian was, but she had always had the upper hand on him when it came to language. She had often conversed with her mother in Vulcan and a running joke in their household had been that the women of the family "spoke a different language." Pushing down the sense of nostalgia this line of thought summoned, T'Liz resumed her meditative stance on the floor.

It may have been hours or days, but the next time T'Liz opened her eyes, it was to a persistent beeping coming from the instrument panel. Standing quickly, T'Liz moved to see what was causing the disruption. A glance at the comm revealed no hails so she moved to check short range sensors. She had almost forgotten that prior to entering her meditative state almost 2 weeks ago, she had set an alert for any vessels detected within scanning range. It would appear that her alert had been triggered, as she was now picking up a large vessel approaching her shuttle.

T'Liz felt an odd sense of both relief and fear as she had no way of knowing who was approaching or their intentions. She could only assume that their approach had been prompted by her distress call which, after checking the chronometer, appeared to have been sent just 12 hours ago. Her call had been sent in Vulcan in hopes that more species were familiar with her maternal species and would be inclined to help. However, she also realized that by specifying that she was Vulcan, she could be painting a target on her defenseless ship.

Before T'Liz could finish this train of thought she felt the familiar pull of a transporter and dissolved into a shimmer of green light.

She didn't know what had happened after she had been transported away from her shuttle, but she could only assume she had put up a fight upon materializing. Her knuckles were bloody and she had a fresh cut on her right temple where it felt like she had lost a fight with the butt end of a phase pistol. An incessant burning sensation on her neck alerted her to a device that appeared to have been embedded in her carotid artery. She reached to pull at the foreign object but was interrupted by a voice to her right.

"Don't touch it."

Searching for the source of the mystery voice, her eyes fell on a young Andorian woman seated diagonally across from her. The woman looked like she had also put up a fight when she was taken captive. She was sporting a nasty gash on her face and several dark blue bruises on her arms and around her neck.

"What is it?" T'Liz asked.

"It's a slave control device, intended to keep you from putting up a fight and to keep anyone who may be looking for you from finding you. I suggest not touching it. Their implantation process is rather crude and you wouldn't want to give yourself an infection by clawing at it. Trust me, you want to fetch the highest possible price at auction and no one wants damaged goods."

The woman looked away then, clearly not keen on speaking anymore. T'Liz had too many questions though and her human half wouldn't allow her to sit silently while she, according to this woman, being sold into slavery.

"Where are we? Who took us? Where are we being taken? Are you just accepting the fact that you're about to be sold like an animal? Who are you? How did you get here?"

She had only intended to ask where they were and who had taken them, but once she started speaking the torrent of questions had come spewing out of her along with her rising sense of panic.

"Well, it would seem I have wrongly judged you Vulcans," the woman began lazily. "It appears you can be quite emotional when your control is tested. Shran will be amused to find that not all of you are so unflappable."

T'Liz suddenly felt like a fool. She had momentarily forgotten that she was masquerading as a full blooded Vulcan and had allowed her emotions to surface quite plainly. She needed to get a handle on her emotions or risk drawing unwanted attention to herself.

Collecting herself, she replied "Do not judge my people based on my actions. It has been a trying month and my control is not what it should be. I'll ask you again, where are we?"

"I did not mean to offend. It's just not often that I get the chance to see a Vulcan actually appear affected by their situation. It's refreshing. My name is Talas." The woman looked expectantly at T'Liz, clearly wanting an introduction before continuing."

"T'Liz."

"T'Liz? That's a unique name. Not sure I've ever heard of a Vulcan with that name. You Vulcans are usually so unoriginal. If I meet another 'Surak' I think I may scream." Talas laughed. "We're currently traveling through the Borderland. It's a lawless region between Orion and Klingon space that is largely controlled by the Orion Syndicate. You've been abducted by the Syndicate and are en route to a slave market to be sold to the highest bidder. We should be getting close now. I've been aboard for three days now and the guard rather rudely told me when he dumped me in here that I would be 'a slave in 72 hours' time'."

T'Liz nodded and took a moment to further examine her surroundings before replying. She was locked in a 10 by 10 cell with Talas and three other women. She wasn't able to identify the species of the other three women and had actually only been able to identify Talas as Andorian due to the history lessons she, Lorian, and the other Enterprise children had been given by Dr. Phlox. In addition to their lessons, the children had been given access to Enterprise's mission logs so they would know what species their ship had encountered and when. It was the thought of these logs that jolted T'Liz back to the present.

"Shran? As in Commander Shran of the Imperial cruiser Kumari?" T'Liz asked tentatively. She wasn't sure it was wise to reveal her recognition of Shran's name, but she hadn't been able to stop the question from passing her lips. It was highly unlikely that the Shran Talas had referred to was the same Shran from the Enterprise logs she had read as a child, but she had to find out. This could change everything.

Talas sat up straighter and her gaze immediately became suspicious. "How do you know Shran? Who are you and what do you know of the Kumari?"

Her blood ran cold. It was evident from Talas' reaction that T'Liz had been correct. But that was impossible. Enterprise's interactions with Shran and the Kumari had occurred before the Xindi attack on Earth, before the mission into the Expanse, and before the ship had been thrown 117 years into the past. If Shran was alive and in command of the Kumari then she couldn't possibly still be in 2067 and neither could Enterprise.

T'Liz could hear her heart pounding in her ears and feel her palms begin to sweat. She found herself once again unable to control herself when she suddenly asked, "What year is it?"


End file.
